SOURCE: "Transmission of Knowledge by Antero Vipunen to Väinämöinen in Kalevala and by Sukra to Kacha in Mahabharata," in Proceedings of the 7 th Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association, Volume 2, Comparative Literature Today: Theory and Practice, edited by Eva Kushner and Roman Struc, Kunst und Wissen, Erich Bieber, 1979, pp. 619-23.

In the following excerpt, Alphonso-Karkala examines the symbolic implications of Väinämöinen's quest to obtain three magic words from the giant Antero Vipunen in the Kalevala

In the oral tradition, when natural phenomena were not readily comprehended, people simplified their perception of the existential situation by explaining the then unexplainable through the imagistic logic of the myth. That was a highly skilled science of that time. Such myths invariably made clear in a dramatic shorthand the symbolic meaning of the natural process. One can easily discern the mythification of the natural phenomenon...